


To Walk Afraid

by imochan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Ghosts, Grimmauld Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sirius Black is six years old, he sees it.</p><p>Written for the Padfooted ficathon challenge, 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Walk Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> For the [](http://padfooted.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://padfooted.livejournal.com/)**padfooted** ficathon challenge: "Somebody thinks they are imagining the big black dog slinking around the shadows at Grimmauld Place. They're not." : > Thanks to Penny and Rina for the betas! <3

**Title:** To Walk Afraid  
 **Author:** Imochan  
 **Rating:** Gen  
 **Warnings:** Angst, perhaps.  
 **Wordcount:** 1, 715  
 **Summary:** When Sirius Black is six years old, he sees it.  
 **Notes:** For the [](http://padfooted.livejournal.com/profile)[**padfooted**](http://padfooted.livejournal.com/) ficathon challenge: "Somebody thinks they are imagining the big black dog slinking around the shadows at Grimmauld Place. They're not." :> Thanks to Penny and Rina for the betas! <3

When Sirius Black is six years old, he sees it. It's not the first time, but the first time he can remember not writing it off to a shadow winged on the wall, like the blink of a portrait, or a fleeting corner of a dream down the corridor. He is sitting on the ottoman in front of the fire, in Father's study, because there was a dinner party in the gardens, and he fell in the fountain trying to show Regulus how to catch a goldfish with a bare hand – slippery, wet, cold and childish. Now his starched collar is soaked, his tie wrinkled, and his silver pocket watch, new on his birthday, won't work; Regulus was carted off with a house elf to eat rice puddings, because he wouldn't stop crying. His consolation is Andromeda, who is two years older, and _very_ crafty, because she whispered in his ear, as he left, that she would catch one for him, and bring it to his room later.

He sits now in front of the fire, with his Father's wool cardigan draped like a blanket on his shoulders; it smells like Indian sandalwood, like the burning herbs of cigars, and the dog comes in through the antechamber door.

To Sirius Black, aged six, this is strange, not because it does not belong in Father's study, but because it's been so long since he last saw it. It looks the same, as if it's not aged three years like him, though maybe a bit smaller in comparable size. But it watches him with great, dark, shining eyes, with matted, shaggy fur and an intelligent sort of tilt of its muzzle, and Sirius says hello.

Hello, he says, just like that. The dog's tail gives a wave, a little twitch of the length in the air, and outside, dimly, Sirius can hear the soft murmur of the adult world, and the clink of silver and crystal, the hum of strawberries and cream in the throats of the beautiful ladies in dark silk and bright diamonds, the easy lullaby of his magic, his blood.

I'm Sirius, he says, and scoots himself forward, onto the edge of the cushion. Did someone bring you here?

"Who're you _talking_ to?" says Andromeda, from the main door, and laughs. She is still wearing her party dress, a white frock of eyelet lace, and the hems are wet from the fountain, Sirius knows. She has her hands held secretive behind her back. "Gone wet and mad from the fall?"

"There's a -- " says Sirius, haughty – don't talk back to a _prince_ \- and then, he stops. Because there was, but now, there is not.

* * *

The first time Sirius saw it, he was too young to remember why or where, only that there had been a large, black dog, beautiful and shining, with dark eyes, staring at him from the end of the corridor. He thought it was fantastic, incredible, haughty and ragged and _enormous_ , like a bear or a demon, a guardian of something of Father's – probably gold and tiny, and costing a great deal of money and blood, he reasoned.

 _Come along, Sirius_ , said the velvet voice, above him, and took his tiny hand. And the dog followed them along the corridor, down the stairs, and into the master bedroom: where the walls were red and the sheets were clean and white, and Mother's hair was unbound and hanging over her shoulders, like two black wings over her chest and belly.

She smiled at him, and she had a bundle in her arms, and it was pink-faced, wrinkled, like a tiny goblin. But she was _smiling_ , and so it must have been good, Sirius reasoned, to hold his little brother like that, while the dog hovered in the doorway like a sentinel.

Guardian, he thought, when his father spoke into his ear and stroked his hair; when he held the tiny, baby body in his shaking arms. Heir and Prince and Sign: good omens, every one.

* * *

Sirius sneaks into the library when he is ten. It is Father's (who looks at him now sometimes with those scuttleblack eyes, like the quivering coils of smoldering ash, and Sirius feels it like an arm around his shoulders _well done_ ). It is Father's, which is why he resists at the door, this boundary warring with the childish lure of forbidden things that smell like wood and rust and leather, and old ink, and old magic. I am going to Hogwarts, he thinks. I am Sirius Black, heir and prince to the Black Family _toujours pur_ , and Slytherin will _beg_ to have me, and if I could. If I could, he thinks, do something - _never hide your hand, Sirius. Only display it with the confidence and power that befits a Black, and you need never coerce. They will follow you then, as they should._ \- like that.

The library is dark, long; immense like a corridor of mirrors and shadows. Sirius thinks it is breathing – there is a dusty wheezeandshift in the air, the far-off rustle, like a paper wing. He doesn't dare light the candles: long, whitegum stalks of wax, thick columns where the caught, hardened drip crumbles under his fingers – _shaking, shh_. He holds a small bluebell light in his cupped hands, instead, a gift from Andromeda on his tenth birthday – it rolls quietly in his palm, nestling in the etches of his skin, lighting the underside of spine and leaf and wood.

He has to reach for the third shelf, where the cracked leather catches his eye – the silver carved in to read _ORACULUM ET MONSTRUM_. Destiny, he reads incorrectly, and fumbles for it like something would rip from his body if he were to let it go. The bluebell light tumbles from his palm and rolls to nestle against his ankle when he stumbles back, tome weighing in his arms.

The leather is cracking, slowly, like the wave of old stone against the weather of centuries. The pages are thin leaf, rasping against his fingers when Sirius pushes it open on his lap, curled in a corner of the stacks, too infused with adventure and oracles, to breathe.

There are too many words, at first, words he doesn't know: all Latin, written in a spidery hand, black ink from a sharpened quill, calligraphy of the ancient wizard; it smells like blood and magic. There are pictures in the margins, that glimmer in the corner of his eyes when he looks to the next, as if their movements are too deep and secret to really ever be caught. A dragon, a lady wrapped in white cloth, reaching to sky, mouth open, a boy with the tail of a snake, a screech owl, a goose, nettles and bees and bones, wrapped like a crown on a skeleton's head.

Sirius turns the page. There is – _oh!_ he thinks - _you, I know --_ and there is a scream, cold and high, from the center of the spine, erupting up in a cloud of dust and stretched vellum.

 _There is death in this house!_ it shrieks – a sound like a sharp, coldwet blade, mouth twisting, the click of gnashing teeth. _Death – Death -- Death – Prince and Son there is DEATH!_

Sirius scrambles, burned and shaking, for the door. The book slams shut with a quake, a thud of dust, and the bluebell light quivers futilely on the floor, before it realizes it has nothing to give it life.

* * *

The thunder wakes him in the night. For once, it's not the clatter of a washbasin, the distant squeal of a house elf, the echoes of thudding steps in the stairs, a whimper down the corridor. Death is a shadow in Regulus's sickroom, the scream still chases Sirius's eardrums, months later, and the dog is curled on the foot of the bed when he starts awake.

The rumble rolls away; there is rain slicing the night, on the windowpanes. Sirius is panting, there is cold sweat on his neck, and the dog is watching him with sleepy eyes, muzzle on paws.

"Oh," says Sirius, hoarse and scared and shaking. "It's you."

There is a thump of the dog's tail on the comforter. The lightning paints a stripe down its coat.

Sirius lets the comforter slide down to his hips, pushes it to his thighs, crawls forward, slow, because there is a soft, living, breathing creature at the foot of his bed. In etched ink and silver lettering, this was a scream, a stabbing, spiraling surge of fear up his spine and into his chest and throat.

The dog lifts its head, nose to the cold air, paws uncurling as Sirius shifts. They blink, together, the world threatens to unravel, outside.

"I know what you are," Sirius whispers, solemn, nose to nose with the great and docile thing. "You're a Grim."

The dog's head cocks, slowly, as if parting the air.

"Am I going to die?" asks Sirius, aged ten and a half, faced suddenly with the immensity of the world.

There is a creak of a door down the corridor, the distant click of footsteps. The thunder rustles a curtain, and there is no response.

"Are you for me?"

* * *

When Sirius Black is sixteen, he knows. _Yes_ , he thinks, and understands, he _thinks_ , that the world is a long curve and here he is at the place where the ends meet, because he's achieved something bright and brilliant and utterly _right_. Not death, he thinks, proudly, you never were, you were my _sign_ , and here I am.

Here I am. And here you are. And we are, he thinks, infinite, now.

 

* * *

>   
> _"Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod [...] I was afraid of death. I chose to remain behind."_ (Nearly Headless Nick,  OotP 38)


End file.
